Research

List of Publications

Theory and Applications of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)

The service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an architecture paradigm in software engineering. In SOA, every feature of a system is considered as a service, and the service is exposed to a network. Multiple services are composed over the network to construct a new service. The SOA is implemented by the Web service technologies (i.e., REST, SOAP). Any client program can easily consume remote services as if the program accesses Web pages.

Traditionally, the SOA has been used for integration of enterprise systems.
However, it is widely used for other systems too, due to success of Web
services and cloud computing. In the present, various computing resources
such as mail, schedule, database, hard disk, server, and SNS, are managed
in the cloud (i.e., network). Users can consume these resources as services
(XaaS, X as a Service), without installing them in the local machines.

All heterogeneous systems are abstracted uniformly as services by the SOA,
which facilitates integration of heterogeneous distributed systems. Emerging
IoT, robots, big data, and AI algorithms can be easily integrated, if the
SOA is successfully applied to them. Recently, the SOA evolves to the micro-service
architecture, which develops a software application as a composition of
small services.

Web of Things (WoT) powered by SOA

However, it is not obvious how to apply SOA to any given system. For example,
it is not easy to explain the following issues:

Standard Services: how to design standard API that is neutral among vendors and implementations.

Service Binding: how to bind a service with an implementation.

Legacy Migration: how to migrate a legacy system to an SOA-enabled system.

These problems are still addressed in ad-hoc manners, based on tastes and
experiences of individual developers.

Our research group is studying how to apply the SOA into practice from
a perspective of software engineering.

Also, we try to solve practical issues in our society by applying the SOA
to various application fields such as sensors, cloud, SNS, lifelog, HCI.

Research and Development of Service-Oriented Smart Systems

A smart system refers to a system that creates new values and
features, by integrating things and devices in a real world with
information systems over a network. A smart system is also
called a cyber-physical system (CPS). Research and development
are under way in various fields, including smart grid,
smart home, smart city, smart agriculture, and smart
health-care.

A smart system comprises a large-scale and heterogeneous
distributed system where various systems in physical and cyber
worlds are incorporated. Therefore, a smart system is one of
most suitable applications that the SOA can cope with.

Smart Home

We have been developing a smart home system, called CS27HNS, in
our laboratory. Powered by the SOA, CS27-HNS deploys multi-vendor
household appliances as Web services. Household appliances such
as TV, air-conditioner, light, curtain, and fan can be operated
by Web. Moreover, sensors, such as temperature, humidity, sound
volume, air pressure, and human presence, can be also operated
as Web services. Integrating these Web services, we are
developing practical value-added services and systems.

Smart City

Integrating multiple smart homes in a city together with city
infrastructure such as road, trains, shops would be able to
solve problems in the city. Every city has some problems,
including energy consumption, traffic jam, air pollution,
safety, security, vacant stores in shuttered streets.
A smart city collects various data from sensors and systems
deployed within the city, grasps the current state of the city,
and performs appropriate actions for a better state.
This cycle eventually brings the city to an ideal state.

A major challenge of smart city lies in its scale of the
system. Of course, a smart city generates a huge amount and a
wide variety of data to be dealt with. Moreover, we have to
achieve continuous operation and maintenance of a large amount
of sensors and devices scattered over the city. Thus, the key is
how to minimize the human effort for managing the system in a
scalable and reliable manner.

Mission-Oriented Large-Scale Environment Sensing with Analogy of Military
System

PRISM: Personalized Real-time Information service with Security Map

Gerontechnology, Smart Health-care

A smart system is also expected by elderly or disabled people.
In this super-aging society, the ICT is one of most promising
technologies for safe and quality living. The engineering-based
approach towards the aging society is called gerontechnology.
Research and development of gerontechnology as well as smart
health-care system attract great attention all over the world.

We are working with experts, elderly and handicapped people in a
a hospital, wellfare facilities, and a handicapped school.
Reflecting opinions in real fields, we are developoing practical
system and services.

Virtual Care Giver: Virtual Agent for Personalized Home Elderly Care

MIETA: Multi-Modal Speech Visualization Application for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing
people

Tales of Familiar: Personalized Narrative Delivery Service Using IoT

Validating Safety of Smart Services

A smart system provides services that interact with human users,
physical things, and environments in a real world.
Therefore, a small defect in the system may cause a serious
accident, leading to an injury of a user, and a
damage to a property. Thus, the smart system should achieve
not only convenience and values, but also safety and security.
Therefore, it is essential to validate if a given smart system
is safe.

Moreover, a smart system consists of multiple components and
features. Hence, even if each individual service is proven to be
safe, a combined use of multiple services may cause an
unexpected defect, due to a functional conflict between the
services. This problem is generally called feature interactions.

We have been studying formal methods that can validate
that a given smart service is safe or not. We have also
implemented a system that can formalize, detect, and resolve
feature interactions in a smart home.

Example of Feature Interaction: Panic Open Service vs Remote Lock Service

Safety Validation Method Using Hazard Analysis

Others

We have been studying other topics, including software comprehension, software
protection, software engineering. More details can be found in the following
links.